Quote from: Vigil on January 27, 2014, 02:53:32 PM

Quote from: mainline on January 27, 2014, 02:46:32 PM

Quote from: Vigil on January 27, 2014, 01:38:04 PM

Quote from: mainline on January 27, 2014, 04:48:12 AM

Quote from: Vigil on January 27, 2014, 03:34:59 AM

The good thing is that it looks like difficulty should be "leveling-off" by the end of this year.

The difficulty will level off when it becomes unprofitable for the best ASIC manufacturers to sell chips. This won't change as long as basic economic laws hold. Rising tide floats all boats yadda yadda yadda.

No.

Can't argue with that logic. Other manufacturers, bored by profits, will stop making, selling, and mining their ASICs. Leaving the market wide open for Ken & his awesome 55nm chippery

The parabolic rise was due to the transition from GPUs/FPGAs to ASICs. As difficulty increases, each addition of hashrate becomes a smaller and smaller percentage to the total. I am not saying that the difficulty will stop increasing, just that the rate of increase will be lower. Thus, the planning of manufacture and profitability will become more predictable. Gains in hashrate are diminishing with each die shrink and it will be that the best way to sell miners is through lowering costs through scaled-up production and not faster chips.

You're missing the obvious - more manufacturers are jumping in on the action. Hashfast's boxen are already hitting the market. Cointerra claims to start shipping within days. Bitfury is ramping up its production. BFL is bound to eventually get its act together. And, as long as there's money to be made, manufacturers will continue cranking out chips.
In other words, though the difficulty climb will slow down, there's nothing to suggest that this slowdown will happen anytime soon.
Or that it will disproportionately help Ken's obsolete chips.